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Comment by porbelm | Hacker News Reader

But... but... Trump's policies are even more tax breaks for the rich and tariffs on everything, do people not understand this?

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I'm not sure if you're being rhetorical, but people in the United States generally do not understand this. Even among those who are pro-Democrat, the differences in tax and tariff policy are usually not the top three issues.

It's pretty hard to run a campaign on "change" when you're the incumbent and nobody voted for you.

Narrator: people did not understand this

I think they just assume things can’t get worse so f** it. Most people only vaguely know policies and are voting based on feelings.

Many people in the US believe that the target country is the one who pays the tariffs, and don't understand that they pay for them, at the cash register.

Plenty of people have good reasons to support tariffs. Free trade destroyed a lot of industries and adjanced communities and the free trade fans didn't give a damn about them.

Do…people really think that prices will go down when cheap foreign labor is off the table? Do they think we can establish replacement infrastructure at comparable costs in months or a couple of years? Will they want to work those jobs for comparable pay to keep the costs of goods stable?

Probably more like wages will go up when cheap foreign labor is off the table. Higher income offsets higher prices for industries where wages rise. For the currently well paid the purchasing power may drop.

Silicon Valley didn't care about the rust belt, so why should the rust belt care about SV?

Will the wages increase more than the prices?

Aren't most things Americans buy imported or contain imported parts (for example all electronics)?

Won't a decrease in exports, because of other nations ti-for-tat tariffs, decrease wages for many US workers?

In aggregate things will get more expensive, but purchasing power of some will increase. Or at least that's the idea.

That "some" probably won't include most Trump supporters.

The fallacy here is that US industries will even be able to compete with 200% tariffs.

They won't, and they can't, and they certainly can't do it immediately. It takes decades to build up the manufacturing efficiency and processes to compete with China. We lost all of it.

We will continue to buy from China because it will STILL be cheaper. And your goods will be 3x more expensive, and that's the best-case scenario for a lot of goods.

High-paying, secure, union manufacturing job are never coming back. New factories are heavily focused on non-union workers and automation.

Cheap foreign labour is good for rich people but bad for poor people that they compete with, at least in the short term.

Yes, but voters are forced to choose between the fuckers who screwed them yesterday and the fuckers who will screw them tomorrow.

We'll have to wait and see re: tariffs, but the democrats are no different on tax breaks for the rich.

Biden was all in on tariffs too.

Didnt Biden want to raise taxes on those making more than 400k a year or something?

Harris' plan lowered taxes for everyone making less than 900K per year

https://itep.org/kamala-harris-donald-trump-tax-plans/

He gave out money during covid that reasonates.

You mean: "He put his name on checks sent out" - it wasn't his money and it would've gone out anyway.

Go look at a chart of income inequality. It hasn’t improved under any administration. So why do they still feel Trump is the answer? Inflation.

Income inequality hasn't increased in the US since 2014, and sharply /decreased/ since 2019. The current administration did an amazing job at improving it!

https://recruitonomics.com/the-unexpected-wage-compression/

(Note this is about wage inequality, which strictly speaking isn't income inequality. The best policy for income inequality would be bringing back the expanded CTC.)

But the median voter doesn't actually like this, because they have above-median income due to being older, and this means service workers got more expensive.

Do you hear yourself? In one breath you agree with me that income inequality is rising, and then say it’s bad for service workers to have higher wages.

No, I said 1. income inequality stopped increasing in 2014. 2. wage inequality is /falling/. 2. median voters (who are upper-middle-class) want it to go back up.

Income inequality is stalled because some benefits from 2020 expired, namely the expanded CTC, and we should really fix that.

Not only is wage inequality strictly speaking not income inequality, but income equality strictly speaking is not wealth inequality. The big problem is wealth inequality. Even if incomes were entirely equalized today, wealth inequality and its pernicious effects would persist for a long time.

"America first" includes economic policies that drive up commerce, even at the cost of our allies. German news is full of VW and other auto executives wanting to leave for production in the US. Trump's tariffs mean companies will just want to produce in the US and export outside it. And it's working.

Do people not understand this?

The idea that you’re going to be producing iPhones or other mobile phones in the US (for example) is extremely unlikely in the next decade. It will be interesting to see the chaos he causes if he goes through with this and the plan to deport 20 million people.

I'm not talking iPhones, I'm talking "luxury" commodities like cars and other expensive equipment where quality counts.

While I'm also skeptical, production could be moved from the US and other Western countries into Asia thanks to the "correct" economical incentives. There is no reason it can be moved again. But we all know it will be moved to Africa and Southeast Asia, but still.

I’m sure there will be masses of folks moving to rural areas to pick up those sweet, sweet agricultural jobs that pay $5/hr under the table, or do repetitive precision PCB assembly all day for $1.25/hr and 80hr 6-day work weeks.

Who said anything about iPhones? Last time a president spoke about it was Obama and he said those jobs are never coming back.

I thought Trump said putting tariffs on everything imported from China would lead to jobs coming back to the US? So Trump said it not me. It’s just an example of where this policy is unworkable is my point.

Tariffs are an unnecessary price increase. To use your example, there will be some modest net growth of manufacturing at the expense of higher prices for everyone, typically dominating any net growth in jobs.

There are no tariff price increases for cars/ other goods produced in the US. Companies will build a manufacturing plant in the US to access the market. They will in turn benefit from low regulation and less strict worker rights.

Correct. Tariffs increase the prices needed to purchase cars generally, not just those produced in the US. Perhaps that is what you're missing in your analysis. If the market rate for a car is P, which is below what America can produce the cars for, P_America, then the only way for domestic production to be competitive at an equivalent quality is for a tariff to balance P_America <= P+Tariff. So while folks prefer to purchase at price P, which a free and non-tariffed market would prefer and would give consumers a better price overall, we instead rely on a distortionary tariff and pay P_America, ultimately hurting consumers. In this Econ 201, this results in dead weight loss. Hacker News would benefit from image inserts here, so indirect you to wiki instead to understand the topic better. This is an inefficiency, meaning that tariffs in imported autos are driving a jobs program without real economic benefit to all (but a minor benefit to folks that are working in an industry doomed to fail after the tariff is removed by a more savvy political party who understands you can't infant-industry your way out of offshored industry).

It's not my analysis. I'm quoting car manufacturing CEO's, as per German national TV.

Ah. Yes. They are kissing the ring and making plans on how to survive.

They are actively leaving and my home state's economy is in real danger of collapsing. I think I'm correct in being afraid.

https://wits.worldbank.org/wits/wits/witshelp/Content/SMART/...

Tariffs will make this much worse for two reasons:

1. importing your inputs becomes more expensive.

2. other countries will impose retaliatory tariffs on your exports.

This is not how to do economic development; Asian countries instead used export promotion. (…And wage suppression and currency weakening.)

We lack the critical infrastructure and skills to produce a lot of these things, so it won’t just magically restore jobs but it will increase taxes for the foreseeable future.

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